


A Gentleman of the First House

by Carmarthen



Category: Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Frenemies, M/M, Period-Typical Sexism, Pre-Canon, Were-Creatures, Werecats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 21:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14222292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: After Mercutio rescues a bedraggled little tomcat from the Montague dogs, the cat keeps coming back.





	A Gentleman of the First House

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting around in my WIPs file for...years, so here it is, finished and cleaned up.
> 
> This is Tybalt/Mercutio endgame, but there's some Mercutio/Rosa in passing, and Mercutio is kind of a sexist ass (I based this Mercutio on SzD's portrayal; imagine Benvolio as whoever you like).

The cat was a scrawny, leggy thing, not quite full-grown, but it hissed and yowled like a demon out of Hell, lashing out at the nearest dog with lightning-quick claws. It was a valiant little fighter, but against the whole snarling pack of Montague hunting dogs, Mercutio was sure it would be torn to shreds.

Behind Mercutio, Benvolio was still laughing, imitating Lady Montague's lecture on drunkenness in high, affected tones, weaving back and forth across the path and punctuating his rant with the occasional blood-curdling shout. "Whistle off the dogs," Mercutio cried, grabbing the nearest dog by the collar. "Hey, you fool beasts, leave off!"

"It's only a cat," Benvolio said, but Mercutio had seen him slipping kitchen scraps to the stable cats earlier that week, so he was just talking bullshit as usual. Benvolio whistled and shouted and the dogs reluctantly obeyed, skulking away again while Mercutio knelt down and held out his hand to the cornered cat. It was a young tom, amber-eyed and black as sin, with its fur matted with mud and thorns; altogether a pitiful beast, cowering and hissing at him. “There, it’s well enough now. Aren’t you coming?”

“In a moment,” Mercutio said, considering. The cat had stopped hissing, but he didn’t trust it to keep its claws to itself. He sidled closer, provoking another hiss, and stripped his jerkin off, moving as slowly as he could.

There! The cat struggled, hissing and spitting, but he’d wrapped it up tightly, and after a few minutes it seemed to resign itself somewhat to its fate. Or perhaps, he amended, it was merely awaiting the opportunity to go for his throat.

“What the devil are you doing?”

“Taking it back to my uncle’s house and giving it a bath,” Mercutio said, peering down at the bundle. Angry eyes glared back at him. “It’s filthy.”

“You, my friend, have peculiar ideas of how to spend an evening,” said Benvolio. “I shall leave you to it; I’ve a mind to find Rosa.”

Mercutio’s face made some kind of sour expression without his instruction. “For God’s sake, why? Has your sainted aunt not made your ears ring enough already this evening?”

Benvolio shrugged. “You know as well as I that Romeo’s fickle. He’ll meet some new girl and—” He tucked his hands under his chin and put on a calf-eyed expression that made Mercutio laugh, almost losing hold of the cat wrapped in his jerkin. “—Rosa might need a friend.”

Mercutio snorted. “It’s your prick. Myself, I say that if her cunt were a bear-trap Romeo would have to gnaw his own cock off to escape the shackles, and I doubt he’s flexible enough.”

“I like Rosa,” Benvolio said, unflappable. “She’s...fierce.”

“You mean she’s got great tits and you think she’ll let you fuck her arse.”

That got a hint of a blush out of Benvolio, but he only shrugged. “Goodnight, Mercutio.” He nodded at the hissing, wriggling bundle of Mercutio’s jerkin. “Enjoy the gratitude of your new friend. I’ll take my chances with fair Rosa’s thorns.”

The cat was not grateful in the slightest to be dunked in a tub of warm water, which was slowly turning pink from the scratches raking Mercutio’s forearms, nor did he appreciate being wrapped in a blanket and sat upon while Mercutio, cursing, combed the tangles out of his fluffy black tail with his own comb.

“You are an ill-favored, ill-tempered, thankless little beast,” Mercutio informed the cat, which he had finally permitted to wriggle free: cleaner, less bedraggled, and miraculously uninjured. The cat perched at the end of his bed, alternately grooming with furious intensity and glaring at him. “I don’t even like cats. I should have let the dogs eat you.”

He washed the drying blood off his arms in his wash-basin, and when he turned back to his bed the cat had vanished out the window into the moonlight, leaving behind a patch of vomited-up hair on Mercutio’s blanket.

Well, no good deed went unpunished.

* * *

Rosa, it turned out, did not want _Benvolio’s_ comfort when Romeo’s head once again turned. Hellcat she might be, but she knew how to kiss, slow and deep and wet, and her hands, once she had pressed Mercutio back against his door and begun plucking at the points of his hose, were surprisingly strong.

“At least let me open the door,” Mercutio managed to gasp between kisses, fumbling with his key in a lock that desperately needed oil. Ha, not so different from any other, he supposed. At least Rosa was a woman, so if anyone saw them and reported to his uncle, the scene would be only moderately ugly. Although—sweet Christ, the woman was like a bitch in heat, and if the laces didn’t give soon he wouldn’t be surprised if she had his dagger out and cut his hose off him—he didn’t much fancy having to talk his way out of marrying her.

He shuddered a little at the thought, which Rosa took as encouragement to plaster herself against his back and slip her hand into his hose, her nails digging into his thigh. Mercutio couldn’t decide whether to wince or moan. At last he managed to turn the key and the door fell open. He pried himself free of Rosa long enough to light a lamp, then turned to find Rosa eyeing his bed with distaste.

Why—oh. There, curled up on his pillow in a neat amber-eyed black circle of fluff, was a cat. _The_ cat. The mostly-healed scratches on his arms itched in reminder. One shutter was cracked open, letting in a shaft of moonlight that made the cat’s eyes gleam with—ah, it was foolish to attribute feelings to a cat. Likely it had only looked for a safe place for the night and saw an open window.

“A _cat,_ Mercutio? What if it has fleas?”

“He’s not mine.” Mercutio warily approached the bed, wondering if he could put the cat outside without being clawed for his troubles again. His untied hose were starting to sag from his hips and his prick was chafing against his smallclothes; if Rosa left him blue-balled over this, he’d drown the cursed cat himself. Or at least speak to him sternly; maybe insult his parentage.

The cat stretched, a long, long line of black fur against the white linen, exposed needle-sharp fangs in an enormous yawn, and leapt up to the windowsill. He gave Mercutio one last hard stare, and vanished out into the moonlight.

“Beastly creatures.” Rosa shuddered. “I can’t bear the way they look at you.”

Privately, Mercutio had to agree that this particular cat, at least, had a deeply unnerving stare. “Forget about the cat,” he said, slipping his arms around Rosa’s waist, pulling her very shapely arse back against his prick. He kissed her neck, and when she relaxed a little and tilted her head to one side, applied his teeth.

In a few moments he had entirely forgotten about the cat.

* * *

Spring turned to summer, into a long, stifling-hot August, during which all Verona seemed to slumber under the oppressive, baking heat. Even the young hotheads of the Montagues and Capulets seemed weighed down with it, emerging only at night to half-heartedly drink some wine and chase a few girls. Come to think of it, actually, Mercutio hadn’t seen a Capulet out and about in weeks, save a few distant cousins who’d never made much trouble.

It would all be a great annoyance, save that he himself didn’t care to exert himself to a brawl, either, not even to relieve the tedium. 

He didn’t see the cat again, but of course there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of stray cats in Verona; what was one foul-tempered little beast to him? “I hope you’ve learned to stay away from dogs,” he told the sky one evening, and then closed his shutters, feeling foolish. If only Romeo and Benvolio had not been dragged away to visit Romeo’s maternal uncle in Mantua, Mercutio would not be so bored, and talking to absent cats like a madman; and not even the interesting sort of madman. He had a particular horror of becoming dull.

It was a relief when an unseasonably cool September brought with it autumn rain and, blown back to Verona on its winds, not only Mercutio’s dearest friends but his best-loved enemy, Tybalt of the Capulets. He was aching for a good fight.

* * *

The cat was at the gate again; Mercutio marked this by the affronted yowl as he tripped over the beast, which surely could have seen him coming and moved out of the way. He caught himself against the ironwork of the door, although the world continued to tilt a bit; too much wine, or not enough.

“I did not miss you,” he told the cat, who had settled a short distance away and was licking ostentatiously between each outstretched toe of one paw, his claws gleaming. “I prefer dogs.”

That earned him a slow blink, and a stare that from a man might have been cause for blades, were Mercutio not feeling so pleasantly inclined towards the world at present. The cat wound his way over and rubbed against Mercutio’s shins with a surprising degree of vehemence for such a small creature, purring loudly. “I do not believe you for an instant.”

But it was chilly out—there had been frost the other morning—and the cat still looked too skinny. He didn't protest when Mercutio scooped him up, but merely set his claws into Mercutio’s doublet for purchase and butted a small, furry head against his chin. He was very soft, really, except for the claws and teeth; why, his fur was silky and fine, softer than velvet or thistledown. The rumble of his purr grew louder when Mercutio scratched around his ears and rubbed under his chin. It was not endearing at all.

“Very well,” he told the cat sternly, “but only because it is cold; and I am _not_ giving you anything to eat. You may earn your keep on mice if you wish, although I will thank you not to bring them into my room.”

It was impossible, Mercutio thought, for a cat to look scornful. Quite impossible; the drink had made him fanciful; that was all. At any rate, the cat would probably be gone in the morning, as usual.

* * *

Mercutio awoke in the gray hours of dawn, when only the faintest hint of pink had seeped through the cracks in the shutters to light his chamber. It was far, far too early to be awake. For a moment all he could do was blink muzzily, scrubbing sleep from his eyes with the back of his hand, and wonder where that infernal banging was coming from.

It was the cat, clawing at the shutters with as if a pack of hounds was after him. "Patience," Mercutio muttered, sitting up, "you wouldn't have appreciated the racket those scoundrels were making in the street last night, either. I'll open the shutters in a moment; sheath your claws."

The cat paused a bare moment to hiss at him, sharp white teeth flashing inches from his hand. Mercutio withdrew his hand with a speed that would have embarrassed him if anyone had been there to see. "Well, if you want to be like that, then you may wait until I have dressed and opened the door, you ungrateful baggage; you may saunter out through the hall, and if a serving boy throws something at you I shall laugh. You know, I didn’t have to bring you in last night, but it was cold and you are a pathetic little thing, and I am quite warm-hearted."

The cat paused to glare at him, tail lashing.

The glow of sunrise had grown stronger, and with it, the desperation of the cat's efforts. Mercutio ignored him, digging through his clothes-chest for a fresh shirt and hose. There was a particularly violent rattle, and he glanced back, only to find that somehow the first light of the sun bursting through every crack in the shutters was piercingly, impossibly bright. He blinked away the water from his eyes—by God, such light was unnatural—and squinted back at the bed. There was a shape against the brightness, far larger than a cat—

—and when his vision cleared, Tybalt, thrice-damned Tybalt of the Capulets, most favored of his enemies, sat there tangled in his blankets like six feet of ill luck, glowering at him in horrified fashion and—oh, the best part of this mad witchery—naked as the day he was born.

Mercutio was only human; he allowed himself to look, even as he absently crossed himself out of habit more than belief. He looked again. It was slightly unfair for such gifts to be wasted on such a man. "I am relieved to see," said Mercutio, as silken-sweet as he could muster at this unholy hour, "that you haven't any inconvenient barbs, save, of course, your ill-used tongue."

Tybalt went pale with rage—or so Mercutio thought, in the poor light—and bared his teeth, as if he had forgotten his form was no longer than of a cat; Mercutio half expected him to hiss. Instead he pulled the blankets more tightly around himself, shrouding the lean, hard lines of his torso and thighs in wool, concealing all that wasted beauty.

“Have I—” Tybalt said after a moment, in a voice that was not quite his usual snarl, “Has the _cat_ been here before?”

“Only every full moon these four months past,” Mercutio said with malicious glee, settling himself on the bed next to Tybalt, who flinched but remained seated, blankets pulled tight around his hips. “Nay, save August.”

“My lord Paris kindly invited the household to summer at his countryside villa,” Tybalt muttered. 

What business Mercutio’s cousin had with Capulets was a question for another day, when he did not have more interesting conversation to attend to. “In truth, I daresay the _cat_ even rather likes me,” Mercutio said, leaning back against his pillow as if conversing with a lover; he marked the color in Tybalt’s cheeks with satisfaction, without regard to its origin. “Why, just last night, I could swear to it that I feel asleep to as contented a purr as I’ve ever heard.”

Tybalt shuddered and passed a hand over his face. “I am drunk,” he said, “or cursed with visions, and this is Hell.”

“Dear Tybalt,” Mercutio said, sitting up to drape an arm around Tybalt’s half-bared shoulders, ignoring the sudden tension under his touch, “sweet Tybalt, thou art king of cats in truth. Is this the gratitude owed a man who, out of the kindness of his heart, rescued a scrawny little tomcat from the Montague dog-pack, who patiently combed all the tangles from his fur and received only scratches for his troubles, who provided a warm bed on a cold night—why, you have misjudged me, you see it now, I have a tender heart.” It was too much, surely, and he'd end up with a black eye for it, but Mercutio had not earned a terrain for holding his tongue, and the sly prattle simply slipped from his lips without thought: “Do I not at least deserve a kiss in all gratitude—”

“Shut _up_ ,” Tybalt said, and kissed him, teeth catching at his lower lip, fingers digging into Mercutio’s arms near hard enough to bruise. Well. Never let it be said that Mercutio turned down an opportunity like this; certainly there was a special thrill to bedding Tybalt of the Capulets under his dear uncle the Prince’s roof....

“ _He_ may like you,” Tybalt hissed against his lips, “but _I_ do not. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly,” Mercutio murmured, and tugged the blanket from Tybalt’s lap.


End file.
